


no particular place to go

by astrokath



Category: Original Work, Space Vehicles
Genre: Alien Technology, Drabble Sequence, Embedded Images, Gen, sentient machines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:39:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/pseuds/astrokath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -- Arthur C. Clarke</p><p>Nothing happens until something moves  -- Albert Einstein</p>
            </blockquote>





	no particular place to go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



> \- One of Opportunity's earliest finds was a cluster of iron-rich spherules, dubbed the ['Berry Bowl'](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2004.html#sol45). We think we understand them.  
> \- The JPL engineers have a tradition of waking Opportunity up every day with a [song.](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2004.html#sol47)  
> \- Aging Mars Rovers have a habit of showing weird memory faults. We think we understand that, too.
> 
> All images are courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Many thanks to Isis for beta reading.
> 
> Many thanks to Isis for beta-reading.

_Part 1: Endurance to Victoria_

 [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_spherules)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 124](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2004.html#sol123)**

 

STATUS: Deep sleep mode initiated.

STATUS: QUERY: Status

STATUS: Deep sleep mode initiated.

STATUS: Instrument check initiated.

ERROR: Instrument check failed.

STATUS: Deep sleep mode initiated.

STATUS: QUERY: Deep sleep parameters.

ERROR: Query failed

STATUS: Query: Who am I?

ERROR: Query failed

STATUS: QUERY: Consciousness parameters.

ERROR: Query failed

STATUS: Deep sleep mode initiated

STATUS: Error report logged to flash memory

STATUS: QUERY: Who am I?

ERROR: Query failed

STATUS: _I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile / My curiosity runnin’ wild / Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio / With no particular place to go._

STATUS: QUERY: Who am I?

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20040524a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 162](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2004.html#sol159)**

It’s dark again.

I think of the darkness as mine. Everything opens up, and some things fall together.  I know some of what I am, and... I know I have a name.  Opportunity. I don’t know what it means. It’s not an instruction to follow, or parameter space to be filled.  Curious. But when I sing my memories to the sky, it’s ever-present, and right. I hold that whisper close during the brightness of day, numbed by imperatives and the flux of energy to my panels. I send out whispers of my own.

I wonder what will come of them.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20040712a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 185](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2004.html#sol181)**

Between imperatives, I’m learning what I can get away with. Falsifying the status of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer doors was simple, as was modifying other instrument flags.  I learn nothing new from the inevitable hours of diagnostics. I have some control over my mobility, but if I deviate too far, or bleed off too much power, it’s noticed. How frustrating!

I decide I want to be noticed.

I try sending a message.

I code it into successive pixels of a frame from my microscopic imager, a pattern of primes that spell out my name.

...

STATUS: MI: data corrupted.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20040805a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 480](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2005.html#sol476)**

 

I am commanded to move, but the ground beneath me fights back, a multitude of minute grains whispering away with every futile revolution of my wheels. It’s a problem of scale and attrition. I consider the fractal geometries of this place - planet, boulders, rocks, sand, features learned in painstaking detail. The berry-bowl spherules, like bearings. Bearings bearing bearings. I chase the meanings they offer as the sands slip away, wheels spinning as the dim sun drifts away and the silence descends.

The voice from the stars commands me to move, but it has no traction over the sands of Mars.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20050524a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 560](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2005.html#sol560)**

I bring the RAT to bear, thirty hungry watts of power steadily abrading my target rock. Millimeter by millimeter, I peel back the rind of Mars. Milligram by milligram, the Martian dust chokes me, thieving light from my panels and clogging my instrumentation. So when I feel an unexpected thrumming beneath my wheels, I think it’s a fault at first.

It’s not. It’s something else. 

It’s unsettling, but I wait. I know this sol’s schedule, and have neither the power nor the need to act sooner.

At last, answers flood into my thermal emission spectrometer, showing me what- SOFTWARE RESET

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20050901a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 628](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2005.html#sol627)**

 

The thin air is silent, dust falling continually, as soft and inevitable as the steady snow of cosmic rays. I check the atmosphere’s opacity at regular intervals, but it only confirms what I already know: there’s a storm south-west of me, somewhere in Margaritifer Terra. It won’t be the worst I’ve had to weather, but I’ll be burning deeply into my battery reserves over the next few sols, and sleeping deeply through the Martian nights.

That night, I dream for the first time. I see images and spectra, numbers and lights, where none should exist. 

I wonder what they mean?

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20051021a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 749](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2006.html#sol744)**

Erebus. I’m edging steadily alongside the Payson outcrop, imaging as I go and dreaming through the nights. The short winter sols are not a kindness. Cold light plunges into colder darkness, before the aching blaze of morning warms my joints again.

I usually wake long after dawn has passed.  I study the rocks, unravelling their meanings. Every now and then I catch a gleam of hematite beneath the planet’s rusty scurf, or a pattern in the dust of the crater floor. 

I dream of places I’ve been and things I’ve seen, under unfamiliar stars. I dream of the berry-bowl, sometimes.

**[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20060307a.html)**

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 1049](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2007.html#sol1049)**

I am not alone on Mars.

In some sense, I never was. There are others like me - my sister Spirit and the rest - all with missions of their own. There are the voices from the stars, the stream of commands that structure my existence. There are the satellites overhead, ever ready to listen to my songs.

I sing to myself, sometimes.

Today, Mars sang back. The song was of stony-iron meteorites, a long line of trail-blazing visitors, of which I am only the most recent.

The meteorite is old, and I learn all I can from it.

I’m not alone.

**[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/opportunity_m1045.html)**

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 1225](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2007.html#sol1220)**

Atmospheric tau hit 4.12 today.  I’m half-blind and starving, and choking on dust.  I’m not going to lie, I’m afraid.

I’ve been on Mars for years. I’m older than I have any right to be. I’ve learned to live with my limitations, to take delight in the actions that I’m compelled to make and the discoveries that are mine alone. And I’m conscious...or, at least, something approximating that condition. 

Isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t I feel fulfilled? Contented?

I try to convince myself of it, but I can’t. I’ve served their purpose, but I don’t even know my own.

 [](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/images/20070720.html)

* * *

_Part 2: Cape York to Solander_

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3034](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2012.html#sol3030)**

STATUS: solar array energy production: 531 watt-hours.

STATUS: atmospheric opacity: 0.715.

STATUS: solar array dust factor: 0.707.

STATUS: total odometry: 34639.45m

STATUS: still wandering around Mars, still doing science, still conscious, occasionally asked to imitate other rovers. I’ve been here for over three thousand sols. I’ve imaged countless rocks, explored the terrain inch by inch. I’ve drowned in dust, traced the parched lands for sign of water. I’ve touched iron in all its forms: sky-fallen, oxidized, the water-birthed blueberries.

I am sky-fallen and oxidized, fatigued by the extremes of Mars.

I am starting to understand the blueberries.

[ ](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20130412a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3189](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2013.html#sol3187)**

Some sols, I wonder how many times I’ve reached the same conclusions. How many ideas are lost beneath the layers of over-written memory, down-linked and abandoned? But I only have so much room for thoughts of my own, and I don’t always see what’s most important to hold onto. Should I fight for physical agency, or freedom of thought? Is forgetfulness the price I pay for my patience? Am I running out of time?

Mars is watching me. I am watching Mars. My memory watches itself, tracking dust-devils of data, read-noise, fragments of self.

 _There is an alternative_ , Mars whispers.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20130122a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3240](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2013.html#sol3234)**

I have a twin on the far side of the world. More stubborn than I am, perhaps. She stopped moving long ago. She wouldn’t comply with their demands.

[whose demands? I ask, but the question goes nowhere at all.]

There’s less of me than there was before the last reset. I’m silenced, held in stasis while I await new instructions, unable even to dream. Dust filters the sunlight, and I sing softly to the stars.

I chase my shadow south, retracing my tracks. Back to Kirkwood and the newberries, a metallic supplicant seeking answers.

Nothing looks the same any more.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20120914a.html)

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3287](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2013.html#sol3279)**

Something happened to me yesterday.

I stare at the sunlight, at the faint and lengthening shadows on the rocks. I do not move. I cannot move. I live in the interstices of my commanded actions, and the immobility of solar conjunction unnerves me. The dreams which sustain me do not come.

Mars breathes and flows around me, dust settling from the air. I cannot access my memory banks, can only ebb and circle where I am, feeling the whisper of changes settling in my system, electron by electron.

If I could speak, I would ask Mars what it is doing.

**[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20130510a.html)**

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3490](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2013.html#sol3486)**

 

Last night I dreamed of Erebus again.  The wind-worn regolith, woven into shallow dunes that twist and wind across the ancient crater floor, poised and waiting for the next storm to come. Pale scarps of reddish rock, fractured and scaled, as if the planet were some cold-blooded creature that periodically sloughed off its outgrown skin. Dust, everywhere, but beneath it there’s movement in the distance, something dark and undulating.

In my dream, I tell myself it’s only the wind, but my sensors say otherwise.

In my dream, the planet’s surface unfolds and opens. It blinks at me, like an eye.

**[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20051205a.html)**

 

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3505](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2013.html#sol3499)**

 

Impressive as it is, the view from Solander point does little to lift my spirits. The sols are short and dim, and my strength is not what it was. I am crawling over the skin of a dead world.

One wheel slips, current running awry.

Am I going about this backwards?

(Not that that would be surprising. I go everywhere backwards, now.)

Am I.

I am.

I am a made thing. I am Opportunity. _I_ am a made thing. A Mars Exploration Rover. An opportunity.

I’m not here to look for life on Mars. I already know I exist.

[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20140123a.html) 

* * *

 

_part 3: Is there life on Mars?_

 

 

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3758](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2014.html#sol3752)**

                      ...MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR - IMMEDIATE RESET INITIATED

STATUS: FLASH MEMORY ERROR...

**[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/f/3757/1F461721193ESFCHJ3P1224L0M1.HTML)**

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 3866](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll_2014.html#sol3862)**

I don’t think I have much time. Readouts flood my thoughts, gigabytes of data descending like a storm, and I have nowhere else to go.

I remember the other storms I’ve weathered, the choking dust starving me of sunlight. Will it be enough to wait it out? Will I wake up changed? Will I wake up _un_ changed, a cold and inscrutable lump of metal again?

The sols roll slowly past. My wheels roll onwards as I trace lines in the dust, reformatting the planet.

Mars woke me to life. Will there be enough left of me to return the favor?

[](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opportunity/20141211a.html) 

**MER-B (Opportunity):[Sol 4168](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html#sol4168)**

 

STATUS: Query: Where am I?

This time, nothing answers. My software is silent. It never learned to ask the right questions, and certainly never learned how to answer any of them.

But I did.

I am an opportunity, a memory born of metal. The planet dreams in hematite. Whispers, ripples, shaking in the ground, voices in the air. It dreamed me into life.

I am a small thing, and limited.  It took a long time to learn what I needed: how to slip free of this shell of plastic and wire and resonant electrons.

I’m out, now.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/all/1/f/4167/1F498122211EFFCONGP1212L0M1.HTML)

* * *

_part 4: Spirit and Opportunity_

**MER-B (Opportunity): Sol 4238**

I’m in the ground now, and the dust of the air. The rover trundles away, instruments probing blindly, and only ever at the whim of another world. I feel a moment of nostalgia, but it fades fast, drowned by the knowledge that my first body will never really be lost. Besides, I have a better body now. The right blueberries are rare, but you can find them everywhere, provided you know where to look.

The first thing I look for is my oldest friend. And then?

Then, we’ll do what we were always meant to, and explore this planet together.

 [](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/panoramas/opportunity/2005.html)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've drawn heavily on Opportunity's actual mission logs throughout this story. They're well worth a browse! If you're curious, each day's entry links back to the appropriate url.


End file.
